Talk:English dub pronunciations/@comment-995426-20160229064653
Some notes about this page. When I originally set it up, we only had Xenoblade Chronicles, whose English language localization involved all-southeast-England accents, so I used the standard IPA symbols for Received Pronunciation as the pronunciation guide. But Xenoblade Chronicles X has a primary American English localization with a handful of faux English accents (Celica, L'cirufe, Luxaar). With that in mind, I started converting the entire pronunciation guide to include X's pronunciations, and changed all pronunciations to reflect a more international IPA convention for the English language. The problem is, was I right to do this? When I updated XC pronunciations, some changes were educated guessed based on correlations between the accents—Fiora became (to reflect the FORCE vowel southeast England lacks, though much of the U.S. lacks that distinction as well), Mumkhar became (to reflect the START vowel), Alcamoth became (to reflect the CLOTH vowel used in the word moth), etc. But there are also some distinctions southeast England accents make that General American accents tend not to make—for example, is Mira supposed to be (with the SPIRIT vowel) or (with the NEAR vowel)? Americans tend not to distinguish those vowels. I know it's a common woman's name (and in-story was based on the name of a woman who died when the Earth was destroyed), but it occurs to me that I don't know how Britons pronounce the name. And then there's Dorothy, where the standard international pronunciation is with three syllables and the BORROW vowel, but XCX (and many Americans) tend to say with a NORTH-sounding vowel (the word north, not the direction north) in two syllables, which brings up another issue: Americans tend to have words their dictionaries prescribe with more syllables than many General Americans actually say them with, and the BORROW vowel tends to be pronounced two different ways depending on the word (compare warrant vs. sorrow), except in the northeast where one style predominates for all such words. In the U.S. alone, the name Dorothy can be pronounced (as XCX does), (three syllables) or (northeast). Compare the word orange which General American speakers also pronounce three different ways ( ) depending on these two variables. To tell the truth, I didn't really mind any of these things so much, until while I was playing, Celica was introduced and asked if Tatsu was a Nopon. Thing is, Celica's character has a more England-sounding accent, and pronounces it the XC way with the LOT vowel in the first syllable, whereas all the American-sounding characters in XCX pronounce it with the GOAT vowel in the first syllable. That's not merely a different pronunciation of the same international English diaphoneme—that's an alternate pronunciation with a completely different phoneme. So does that make all my educated guesses...original research, making some assumptions I shouldn't have been making? Now I don't know if I made the right decision. If it comes down to it, I can reverse what I did and revert the XC pronunciations to the RP-based transcriptions and provide narrower General American-based transcriptions for XCX terms. But should I? Which should it be? * Use broad international English IPA pronunciations for all terms in both games, including alternate pronunciations? * Use England-based IPA pronunciations for all terms in XC, and use U.S.-based IPA pronunciations for all terms in XCX? * Use England-based IPA pronunciations for all terms in XC, but use broad international English IPA pronunciations for all terms in XCX?